Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas

STUDIEN zur Ostmitteleuropaforschung 32 Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883-1940 Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883-1940 STUDIEN ZUR OSTMITTELEUROPAFORSCHUNG Herausgegeben vom Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft 32 Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883-1940 VERLAG HERDER-INSTITUT · MARBURG · 2015 Bibliografi sche Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografi e; detaillierte bibliografi sche Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.ddb.de> abrufbar Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymisierten Peer-Review-Verfahren unterzogen. This publication has undergone the process of anonymous, international peer review. © 2015 by Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, 35037 Marburg, Gisonenweg 5-7 Printed in Germany Alle Rechte vorbehalten Satz: Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung – Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, 35037 Marburg Druck: KN Digital Printforce GmbH, Ferdinand-Jühlke-Straße 7, 99095 Erfurt Umschlagbilder: links: Cover of the journal „Trimitas“ (Trumpet) of the Riflemen’s Union of Lithuania. Trimitas, 1930, no. 41 rechts: The fi rst watch of Lithuanian soldiers at the tower of Gediminas Castle. 10 28 1939. LNM ISBN 978-3-87969-401-3 Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 I Under the Rule of the Romanovs ...................................................................... 6 II In the Vortex of the First World War ................................................................. 45 III A Time of Changes: 1918-1923 ......................................................................... 63 IV How to Liberate the Capital? (1923-1939) ........................................................ 92 V The Recovery of the Capital: 1939-1940 .......................................................... 171 In Lieu of a Conclusion ............................................................................................ 200 Zusammenfassung .................................................................................................... 207 List of abbreviations ................................................................................................ 210 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 212 Index ........................................................................................................................ 234 V Introduction There are few cities in Europe which are so mythologized as Vilnius. I have in mind the stories taken from the past, which do not necessarily have to correspond to the facts. The history of this city is so peculiar that it simply asks to be transferred to the space of a fairy-tale, which has been done many a time already and the stories dif- fered no matter who they were told by: Lithua nians, Poles, Jews or Belarusians. Czesław Miłosz 1 From the beginning of the 14th century till the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Com- monwealth, Vilnius was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and at the same time the cultural and economical centre of the state.2 At the end of the 19th century Vilnius was one of the regional centres of the western borderlands of the Russian Em- pire, with about 150,000 inhabitants. What illustrates the offi cial status of Vilnius as a regional centre best is that until 1912 it was the centre of the governor-generalship. While in the middle of the 19th century, particularly in the 1860s, the imperial authorities sought to turn this city into a centre of Russian power and carry out so-called Rus- sifi cation in it, in later decades we see a clear tendency of lessening Vilnius’s infl uence (an illustration of this could be the separation of the three provinces that were referred to as Belarusian provinces from the Vilnius governor-generalship in 1869-1870, or the abolishment of the governor-generalship itself in 1912). This desire of the imperial authorities to decrease Vilnius’s infl uence in the region was related to the conviction that this city had remained a bastion of Polish culture. 3 A Russian University was not even founded in the city, as the authorities feared that the Poles could become established in it. At the same time, as the former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the largest city of the region that had an institution of higher education that had operated for a long 1 MIŁOSZ, pp. 148-149. 2 This research was funded by a grant (No VAT-48/2012) from the Research Council of Lithua- nia. 3 STALIŪNAS, An Awkward City, pp. 222-243. 1 time (until 1832), and the location of many different cultural and scientifi c institutions, Vilnius was the informal capital of the region for different national groups.4 According to the 1897 general census of the Russian Empire, the percentage of the Jews in Vilnius accounted for 40 per cent, that of the Poles constituted 30.9 per cent the Russians 20 per cent the number of the Belarusians 4.2 per cent, while the percentage of the Lithuanians stood only at 2.1 per cent.5 The data concerning the national make-up of the residents of the city of Vilnius collected on different occasions at the beginning of the 20th century, or the results of the election to the local government or Russian State Dumas were not very pleasing for Lithuanians: due to the small number of Lith- uanian voters, Lithuanian fi gures had no possibilities to be elected to these institutions. The fact that Lithuanian activists also had no allies in this struggle, as will be shown in this book, also complicated the situation. Leaders representing one or another national group of Lithuania did not approve of the political programme of the Lithuanians, which provided for the creation of territorial autonomy fi rst and later that of an inde- pendent state “within its ethnographic boundaries” with Vilnius as its capital. Several attested-to fragments of speeches or conversations of Lithuanian public fi g- ures of that time recorded the complicated situation of the Lithuanians in Vilnius at the beginning of the 20th century. According to one of the Lithuanian activists, Petras Klimas , at a charity evening organised by the Lithuanian Society for Support of War Victims at the beginning of 1915, Father Juozas Bakšys fi rst looked at the Lithuanian social activists sitting in the fi rst rows and then raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed in unison with the future President of Lithuania Antanas Smetona : “If the ceiling of Mikalauja tumbled over now, all of Lithuanianness would disappear in Vilnius…”6 Petras Leonas , after the First World War had come to an end, joked about the situation in Vilnius as follows: “it would suffi ce for a group of armed “peoviaks” to arrive in a large motor-car and take away us, six ministers, plus the Presidium of the Council, and there would be no Lithuania”.7 Other circumstances also show that the Lithuanian social activists understood the complexity of the ethno-demographic and political situation. At the beginning of the 20th century, some activists, fi rst and foremost those who belonged to the Catholic current, suggested that Kaunas should be declared the centre for gathering Lithuanians together, and not Vilnius.8 Nonetheless, irrespective of all these circumstances, the ma- jority of the leaders of the Lithuanian National Movement saw Vilnius as the capital of modern Lithuania; hence, it is important to make clear what arguments determined this persistent desire of the leaders of Lithuanian Nationalism to create a nation state with Vilnius as its capital. The Lithuanians’ persistence can only be understood in relation 4 WENDLAND, Region ohne Nationalität, pp. 77-100. 5 It should be underlined that the “native language” rather than the “nationality” was recorded. 6 KLIMAS, p. 54. The hall at the Church of Nicholas is meant. 7 PETRAS LEONAS: Mano pergyvenimai [My Experiences], in: LMAVB RS, f. 117, b. 1204, l. 401. Peoviaks are members of POW (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa [Polish Military Or- ganisation]). 8 GUDAITIS, p. 16; ALEKSANDRAVIČIUS, p. 162; STALIŪNAS, Kauno vizija, pp. 59-64. 2 with the Lithuanian national project, fi rst and foremost the geographical image of a future Lithuania. The arguments of the nationalists’ claims to a “national territory” can be generalised in three groups. The fi rst group includes arguments of a cultural-political nature (the ethnographic principle; arguments that in one way or another could be understood as espousing “historical rights” to an area); the second group includes arguments connect- ed to power (the aim to occupy as large a territory as possible as well as strategically important areas or economically signifi cant centres); and fi nally the third group, which uses, geographical arguments (references to “natural” borders, which are supposedly marked by natural objects such as water bodies, mountains, its presence on an island, etc.).9 In this book, we shall try to determine which motives were important for Lithu- anians and how they tried to implement the idea of a national Lithuania with Vilnius. Researchers also sometimes notice that the ties of national groups can vary with different parts of what could

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